


You're Not Really a Lady Yet, Are You?

by maskedbeliever



Category: Abarat Series - Clive Barker
Genre: Choking, Clit Play, Digital Penetration, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fingering, First Orgasm, First Time, Forced Orgasms, Hair-pulling, Loss of Virginity, PIV, Penis in Vagina, Rape, Sexual Assault, Sexual Inexperience, Sexual Violence, Size Difference, Vaginal Sex, Virginity, Virginity Kink, age gap, clitoral stimulation, experience gap, painful first time, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:48:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24417646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maskedbeliever/pseuds/maskedbeliever
Summary: Set during "Days of Magic, Nights of War," Christopher Carrion drags Candy Quackenbush back into The Dead Man's House after their showdown on the rooftop instead of letting her fall. Her friends are late to save her.Incensed and intrigued by her escape attempts, Carrion indulges in a kind of cruelty that he knows will force Candy to think about him as often as he thinks about her. He explains to her what "love" really is, in his warped and scathing view, and why it is so dangerous to people like them both.
Relationships: Christopher Carrion/Candy Quackenbush
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've plucked a few quotes from the books to lead story sections. All of the quotes are from chapters about Candy's ordeal with Carrion in the Dead Man's House immediately preceding this fic, so they will be fresh on the characters' minds.

_"I feel if I knew your dreams then it'd be like having you close by me all the time."_

_"I don't understand anything about you, except that from the first moment I knew of your existence I also knew that some part of who I am is tied up with some part of who you are. And until I understand why, I cannot let you go._ "

-Christopher Carrion, Days of Magic, Nights of War Chapter 38: Midnight's Heart  
  


After Christopher Carrion dragged the exhausted girl back inside from the roof, it wasn't much of a fight. Cold though she was, Candy Quackenbush was determined to writhe and struggle and tear herself free of him, but her body couldn't keep up with her will anymore. The Lord of Midnight was bigger and stronger and in the moments of chaos, he used her panicked flailing against her. When she tried to turn to flee once more, Carrion moved in close and pinned her body to the wall with his own. The size of him eclipsed her small, shivering body.

 _Why didn't he just kill me?_ she couldn't figure it out. After so many threats of immediate death or death-by-Absolute-Midnight, he'd kept her alive. After telling her she'd be better off dead, he'd kept her alive. After telling her he'd kill her, he brought her inside. How many of his threats were empty? How many genuine threats were there that he had never voiced?

Candy tried again to move, to shove him off and elbow his ribs, but her cheeks flushed red when she tried to push herself away from the wall and only pressed her back against his robed chest instead. The back of her head knocked painfully against his glass collar. The nightmares inside of it slithered against the glass and back to their master, then back to the glass. They wanted Candy as much as he did.

"Lady," he said in a normal speaking tone as if he had not just pinned her to the wall. He managed to sound gloomy even when mildly amused. The fact that he was calling her _Lady_ now instead of _Girl_ or _Child_ the way he usually did was proof enough that he was mocking her. "We've established that trying to escape is not your best option. Be pragmatic."

His right hand seized her right, his pale palm against the back of her hand, his too-long, icy digits folding in between her fingers and against the center of her hand. His sharp nails threatened to dig in against her skin. Carrion held their arms out to the side like he meant to lead her in a dance.

"I _am_ being pragmatic!" she insisted in a growl, still pushing back against him. "I'm getting _away_ from this island!"

Once more her body rioted with all her remaining might against Carrion while he kept her pressed to the wall. He rolled his eyes. This time his left hand snaked in over her throat, his thumb and index finger tracing her jaw and spreading their unnatural chill. The cold burrowed into her jawbone with a jolt.

She heard the man take the smallest of staggered breaths when he traced the shape of her jugular. She realized all at once that she could feel his body through his clothes. And pressing at the small of her back, just above her ass, she felt--

Christopher felt that moment of horrified realization in the girl and when she froze in shock it _nourished_ him. His nightmares wiggled in delight. Her blood ran cold as the snow outside. 

" _Lady_ ," he said. This time it was a sneer, mocking her. "You know you can't rub yourself against me this way without some kind of reaction, don't you?"

His malicious smile evolved slowly. It began with his scarred lips pressed together in a thin line and became a proud display of every pointed tooth in his mouth. He used the hand on her jaw to force her to look back over her shoulder at him with one eye. It wasn't as nice, he thought, to see only _one_ of her lovely mismatched eyes. Her eyes were better together in bright asymmetry. These days (these post-Boa days), conventional beauty was dead to him. _Conventional beauty_ was a term that was synonymous with _boring-looking_. Uniqueness was the beauty standard worth coveting.

Candy tried not to show him how scared she was, but Carrion knew. He could feel it in her body, his nightmares could smell it on her. Terror was his expertise, a language he was more fluent in than any other. Fear oozed from her pores, and while her heart beat so rapidly in her chest that she kind of thought it would kill her, she felt his body change as well. The right hand holding her arm to the wall was no longer chilly and clammy but _burning_ warm. His body under the robes likewise became radiant with heat as if his veins ran with magma. Snow that had dusted his robes melted and evaporated and the snow on Candy began to do the same thanks to their proximity.

 _"Candy_ ," he said, forgoing the title this time. His voice was low and husky and he drew her name out. She would have sworn that she could feel the hiss of his breath on her hair and skin, but his face was still submerged in the fluid of his collar. "You're not _really_ a 'lady' yet, are you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. She could only stand stock-still, terrified of rubbing too hard against his body again, terrified of feeling his hardened cock through his pants and robes. It had taken some adjusting when people in the Abarat had taken to addressing her as lady, but she'd never seen a reason to think they were wrong to call her that until now.

"I _mean_ ," he drew out the last word and finally let go of her jaw. Her head snapped back to facing forward, forehead against the wall to avoid looking at him. That stung Carrion just a bit, but he was so wrapped up in his mad passion for torment that he pushed it aside. As he went on, his freed hand trailed down her side. "You're just a _girl_ , Candy. You're _uninitiated_. Never been intimate with a lover. Never been _fucked_. I bet you've never even been _fingered_."

Candy really, _really_ , did not want to dignify any of that with an answer--but of course, he was right. How had he known? She didn't realize how plainly obvious it was. He waited patiently for a response while wearing his sadistic grin, knowing that it would come eventually. While Candy faced the wall he looked at his left hand. Huge, skeletal but strong, with long nails that he kept well-sharpened. Carrion clicked his thumbnail against the decorative metal talon on his middle finger three times quickly, and magic vanished every piece of ornamentation on his hands and shortened, smoothed, and blunted his nails. That was important and, in his opinion, Candy ought to be _grateful_ \--but she wasn't experienced enough to immediately understand the importance of short fingernails. By then, the quiet had drawn on so long and the silence had become so vacuous that Candy felt compelled to try to speak.

"I-I," she stammered, furious with him for his disgusting taunts. He cut her off by snaking his left hand around her front and plunging it into her pants, into her panties to roughly palm her vulva. She shouted every combination of loathing and terror that came to her at that moment, but he was not deterred even when she tried to escape again.

"You laughed at me before," he cut her off. He was still sore that she had dared to laugh at him of all people before trying to make her escape, and his hand moved slowly, spreading a feverish warmth over her mons and down to the lips, probing with his fingers. "Now look at you. You're _stuttering_.

"I'm going to do you a _favor_ , _child_ ," he went on. His clever, burning fingers twisted into place, sliding between her labia, roaming down then up, and finding her clit. Pressing then stroking it. Candy's hips bucked reflexively towards his hand, then back against his body hard enough to make him hiss through his teeth with pleasure when her ass rubbed against his cock through his clothes.

"Stop touching me!" she bellowed. Her left hand, grabbed for his wrist to try to pull him away from her, but she may as well have tried to bend iron with her bare hands.

"You won't let me take a look at your dreams," he whispered, growing quieter every time she shouted. Just as he hoped, she quieted to listen to him speak. "I can't know you as intimately as I had hoped. I just wanted to _understand_ you well enough to take a piece of you with me for the rest of my life. But _clearly_ that is not agreeable to you.

"Here is what is going to happen.  
  
"I'm going to give you nightmares, Candy. For the rest of your life. I'm going to give you the most exquisite, unforgettable pleasure that a man like me can give his favorite little girl."

That comment took her breath away, made her feel like he'd reached through her chest and squeezed her heart hard enough to make it hurt. She didn't think that any adult--let alone a _man_ \--had ever told her that she was their favorite _anything_ before. Even though Carrion had just laid out a terrible threat, all she could think at first was how strange it was that he had called her his _favorite_. Not that it was easy to think with his fingers rubbing against her clit faster than she had realized was possible.

She was _wet_. God help her, she was wet. It was just a reflex of her body, never a choice, but Candy instantly blamed herself as the man caught the fluids and smeared them all over his fingers so they could work faster on her clit. Faster than Candy had ever managed to play with herself on quiet nights in her bedroom in Chickentown. Her mouth hung open in a quiet scream--or perhaps a quiet shout of pleasure.

"This is _horrible_ magic," she told him through clenched teeth when she regained control of her mouth. It had to be magic, right? She was trying to sound scathing as the pleasure built and built up in her body.

For the first time, Carrion barked a laugh. He pushed even closer to her until her ear touched the glass collar about his neck.

"There's no magic in this," he said with a smirk. "Just _you_ and _me_. I can feel how much you love it already. Just _feel_ how wet you are, Candy. I would bet this entire house that you've never been this wet in your whole pathetic little life."

Her face burned red. Leaning to their left to look at the side of her face, Carrion caught sight of tears flowing out of her eyes while she bit her tongue. He wanted to lick them off of her face and carry the taste as a piece of her forever on his tongue.

Christopher felt the weakness in her knees and used one of his feet to nudge her legs further apart to give him better access between her thighs. She adjusted her stance without complaint, and his mouth twisted into a squiggled line of a smile. 

"Be _present_ , Candy," he said, pulling her mind into the moment, not giving her any chance to try to think of other things so she could pay less attention to him. He took a reassuring tone now. He sounded like a kind teacher reminding her not to get carried away with doodling too intensely during his lessons. 

It was cruel of him to sound like he was doing this for her own good, but cruel was what he knew best. "You're going to remember this, _girl_. You're going to think of this feeling every time you touch yourself for the rest of your short life. Every time you let someone _else_ touch you, you will feel _me_ instead. Every time you think of pleasure, I will be there, and every time you dream of me, you will dream about this. You will feel me _right here behind you_. Always." As punctuation, he rocked his hips forward to push his erection against her spine.

This was both a threat and a promise as he hugged her so tightly to his body that he almost crushed her like a bug. Her legs shook as she stood on her tiptoes from trying to avoid his touch, biting her lower lip to hide any evidence of the overwhelming pleasure he was inflicting on her body. Her orgasm was on the horizon, but thankfully, his fingers stopped moving before she came. When he withdrew his hand from her pants she thought he would be done with her and that would be it. For just a split second she thought he would leave her alone, or at least stop touching her that way. Anything but.


	2. Chapter 2

_"Why are you putting off the inevitable?_ Give in, _little girl. This is just adding pain to pain. I've told you over and over:_ there's nowhere left to run! _"_  
  
-Christopher Carrion Days of Magic, Nights of War Chapter 43: The Dark Denied

  
Carrion wrapped an arm around Candy's midsection and pulled her back to him, lifting her up and against his body. As soon as she had the chance, Candy was back to fighting, legs bicycling in empty air. "Let _go_ of me!" she yelled. In response, he held her so tightly that it felt like he'd crush her abdomen.

He admired her fighting spirit but remained annoyed by it. She was _exhausting_ , but there were absolutely no limits in what Carrion would do for _whatever_ this blossoming obsession with Candy was. His withered heart thrummed for her with enough intensity to warm his entire body and his cock _throbbed_. If he hadn't been a patient man, he would have fucked her right there against the wall.

He waved a hand in the air, tracing a familiar symbol with his fingertips. He didn't have to watch his work to know he performed the spell perfectly.

The lights went out, and this time no supernatural illumination kept the house visible. The only light was the golden glow of the nightmares in the villain's collar. Candy had already become sluggish with exhaustion and the discomfort of his crushing grip, but now she was almost still. She felt that if he dropped her and she ran, she would just stumble through the darkness of the confusing house. It seemed so large that she could get lost inside of it and die of hunger before she found a way out.

Candy made the mistake of twisting to look back at her captor. Christopher's eyes seemed to reflect the light cast by his small-but-dazzling nightmares, his pupils shining like tiny mirrors rather than the black pits they normally were. The way that the shifting light played over the rest of his face made it look like his bony features were rearranging ever-so-slightly under his pale skin. Her head snapped away. Better to not look.

It was no challenge then for Carrion to bring her to his bedroom and hurl her to his mattress' black linen sheets. Like the entire house, they were well-kept and there was no comical plume of dust that billowed up when she landed. He kicked the door shut behind him and it vanished, leaving a smooth wooden wall.

Candy had expected, based on both appearance and name, that Carrion would smell like rotting meat. This was not the case. Being face down in sheets he had used let her put her finger on pieces of his scent. He was a mix of bonfire smoke and pine planks and old fabric stored in wooden wardrobes, some of the driest smells in the world and unusual for a man who had always lived so near the sea.

Before Candy could roll out of the bed to find her footing, he lunged. He dragged her back towards him on her stomach by her ankles, then when she was close enough his hands clamped down on her slender thighs like vices--hard enough to bruise through her pants. Following a tiny scuffle, he got her where he wanted and put a hand on the back of her head and pushed her face down into the pillows. He finished pinning her by putting a knee on the small of her back.

It wasn't enough pressure to smother her, but it was a further point of disorientation and it gave him the time to use his free hand to open his cloak and his pants with fingers still smeared with the girl's fluids. He did not remove any of his clothes, and Candy was only barely aware that he was adjusting his garments while she breathed hard. The body underneath his vestments was not exceptionally malformed compared to his face, but most of him was scarred and at _best_ he considered himself to be hard on the eyes. He was more self-conscious than he wanted to admit and nudity made him feel _exposed_ even when there was no light to see him by. Clothes offered him a sense of protection. That was another reason to strip Candy of hers.

"Will you undress yourself, or is that going to be another chore that you foist onto me?" he asked, hunched over her. With a flick of his wrist, her shoes rolled off of her feet and her socks slid off the bed after them like inchworms. Candy didn't give him an answer, so he continued with a light threat. "If you won't do it, maybe I should light the candles and call Letheo in and make _him_ do it."

This time Candy reacted. " _Don't!_ " She demanded. The humiliation that she felt already was gutting, but just _imagining_ anyone else being in this room, seeing what was happening almost made her _sick_.

She was a tough girl. She had never shrunk from challenges in the Hereafter or in the Abarat. She stood up to adults when they were wrong, she investigated things that she wanted to know more about, and she had been the subject of terrible violence. Being scrappy and willing to do the right thing in the face of danger was something that Candy liked about herself, something that she was _truly_ proud to be. That was why it hurt so much to be made weak and why the thought of anyone knowing that she could be made helpless was so repulsive. 

"I thought you'd feel that way," Carrion said. "It's kind of you to spare Letheo the embarrassment. But if you try to run again, I will catch you first and then I will call him. Understood?"

"Don't you _dare_ call him."

"The door is erased. Letheo is presumably in his room again by now. No one will ever need to know, Candy, as long as you behave. _This_ is just between us." He smiled slightly, the scars on his lips stretching. He reached down to touch her cheek with the pads of his fingers. They were still too hot, but that wasn't the reason she pulled her head away from his hands. "As long as you don't do anything stupid."

Cautiously, he took his knee off of her back. Candy was slow to act, weighing her options and her chances. She was almost blind in the dark house and weakened after a lot of struggle. Running was no option, and any magic she attempted to perform would be amateur next to Carrion's expertise. And there was no telling what he had prepared ahead of time.

He gave her ample time to make this decision. It was better that she realize all on her own with no extra rushing that she was truly trapped. It was one thing for her to know in her head that she couldn't escape, but he needed her to process it and feel it in her bones. He crept back and stood at the side of the bed, towering over her seated form. Only the faintest light found its way to the huddled girl trying to process the impossible non-choice she had been given. His eyes never left her, but he reached low to touch himself.

To his satisfaction, it wasn't long before Candy slowly sat up, still facing away from him, and pulled off her thin jacket. She wadded it up in her hands and turned just enough to hurl it at Carrion. He sidestepped it calmly and let it flutter to the floor. She pulled her shirt off next, then fumbled for and unhooked her bra. These she dropped off the side of the bed nearest her. If Christopher had been the kind of man who needed to savor the process of watching the girl undress, he would have been left unsatisfied by her unceremoniousness. 

His hand tightened around his erection at the sight of her bare back. She was a slender thing under the clothes, and Carrion admired how fragile she appeared. Her shoulder blades seemed sharp, and he could make out more than a few bumps of her spine. He could so easily imagine her cracking like pottery if he played too roughly with her. He knew that couldn't be the case, though, because she had survived this long. He wanted to push her limits, find that breaking point. He wanted to see what Candy was really made of deep down, because he liked her. He really did like her.

He told himself that his sense of romanticism had been shattered like glass and ground into razor-sharp shards under a cruel princess' heel years ago. He had never _made love_ to anyone because of that; he had only _fucked_.

It wasn't hard for last son of the Carrion house to find people who wanted to fuck just as it wasn't hard to find people who ran from the sight of him. His suitors-for-a-night came in all species and genders, as far as he could tell. He enjoyed fucking, but he never felt anything for them remotely like what he had felt for Boa. Or like what he felt now for Candy, which was something else. Probably.

With her thumbs hooked into the sides of her pants and panties, Candy pulled the clothes off her lower half all at once. For a flash of a moment, she lay on her back with her legs in the air while her jeans tangled them together until she kicked them off. The room was so cold, the girl had to work hard not to let her teeth chatter.

Electricity twisted up and down Christopher's spine. He closed the distance between the two of them again before even thinking about it. While he was as silent as could be, Candy felt when his weight was added to the bed and glanced over her shoulder to confirm. Carrion saw the muscles in her back tense all at once when she went back to looking forward. She didn't want to see him or the look in his eyes.  
  
He understood and would not hold it against her.  
  
Carrion reached for her dark hair and wove his pale fingers in with the strands. This made her tense up and sit as straight as she could, hands balled in fists in front of her abdomen. He throbbed so hard that he had to shut his eyes for a moment to focus.

"I wonder," he said. He let his hand descend from her hair to her back. He pushed between her shoulder blades with his palm, guiding her back down to the bed and descending upon her like a shadow. She folded forward and was forced to rearrange her legs so she lay flat on her stomach instead of having them under her torso. His open cloak covered them both like a blanket and made him seem like a vulture with its wings spread over its prey. "If you took that deal because you wanted to spare Letheo a punishment which would give him nightmares, or if you did it to save _yourself_ the shame of being seen with me like _this_."

It was both and he knew that. No partner, voluntary or involuntary, would want to be seen with him. At one time that had caused him pain. Now he was callused enough that he could use it as a weapon against her.

Candy wisely didn't answer. Her eyes were shut. Carrion traced her spine with two fingers. "You're still cold from your stupid excursion outdoors, little girl. I warned you about the snow, didn't I? Doesn't matter. I'll keep you warm." He leaned in, and even though he was nearly horizontal, the fluids in his collar never quite poured out of it. It was as if the liquid had suddenly become incredibly viscous or even solid, though his nightmares had no difficulty still swimming through it like water.

"I'd rather be _freezing_ ," she said, and the ice came through in her voice. But god, the heat was nice on her shivering flesh.

"Hush. Liar," he told her, though there was no force in the statement. Christopher's burning palms groped at Candy's round ass and hips. Her muscles, tight and aching from exertion and cold, could finally melt. A confused whimper slid out of her and into the sheets while his hands roamed, massaging everywhere they found tension. She couldn't explain her reaction, but Carrion knew it intimately; he had the same problem she did. Candy was starved for touch and her body couldn't help but _revel_ in gentle contact after a lifetime of not getting enough hugs and cuddles and pats on the head. His hands traveled up and down her back, all the way to her neck and shoulders.   
  
The girl shed a few tears, absorbed instantly into the dry sheets. It wasn't fair that this man, Christopher Carrion, Lord of Midnight, could touch her and make her suddenly realize that she had been missing something as basic as _contact_ for so long. It should _never_ have been _him_ touching her to make her muscles unwind and make heat come back to her freezing limbs. But it _was_. It was all him and it felt _good_.  
  
"I know," he murmured in response to the changes in her breathing. The ever-present misery that usually ran as an undertone in his low voice was on full display. "I know how it feels. Like you were drowning for a long time and didn't realize it. And you've only just managed to surface for air, to swim to the shore and lie in the moonlight... I know. These flesh-and-bone bodies of ours, they are not meant to be alone, girl. You need touch to live."  
  
Yes, he had hit upon it precisely. Candy believed him when he said he knew how it felt, which chilled her. Being known by this monster, being _seen_ by him with more acuity than any other adult or peer in her life made her heart ache.

She interrupted him and let out a little cry when she felt his cock rubbing against the soft flesh of her behind. She could guess what it was by the texture of his skin and the wetness at the tip while the rest of him was still hidden by fine textiles.

He took a deep breath of his nightmare soup as he pressed his shaft against her. He used his weight to press her down to the sheets. "I am absolutely certain you'll never tell anyone about this. Not to protect _me_. But it would drive you _mad_ to have your friends worrying about you. Wouldn't it?"

Her silence was his answer.

He shifted position to slide his cock between her legs, against her wet, pink labia. She inhaled sharply. It wasn't hard to navigate by touch in the dark. The head parted those flushed folds and found her still-swollen clit, using his knees to keep her legs forced apart. Candy was almost as hot between her legs as his body was, making Carrion break the silence with a long, low groan of undisguised desire. His sound of pleasure startled Candy even more than the feeling of his erection. She had never heard a man make such a noise in her life, but it resonated in her at once. Carrion regained his self-control and stroked her side like he was soothing an animal.

"After all, if you told someone, they wouldn't be able to stop themselves from imagining how much you screamed in pain. Or what positions we were in. How I forced you into it. Whether or not I left bruises on you, or cuts maybe. They'd even wonder what we talked about. It would keep them awake at night. You'd see that pain and curiosity on their faces... and the worst part for you would be knowing, deep down, that it actually _felt good_."

"Bullshit!" she barked. Cursing made her feel more adult in the moment, made her feel more like she could be ready for what might come.

Carrion rolled his eyes with something like cold affection and responded not with words but by wrapping his left arm around her front, hand sliding between her belly and the sheets until his fingertips reached low enough to find her clit again.

This time it was Candy's turn to release an uncontrolled moan. Carrion's eyes shut and for a split second, he allowed himself to imagine that she had made that sound with her arms wrapped around him lovingly. He pushed the vision aside before it excited his heart _too_ much. He wanted so badly to line the head of his cock up with Candy's virgin hole and violate her _immediately_ , but his sexual self-control was miles better than his temper.

"Don't write me off yet. If I _only_ wanted to hurt you I'd already be _deep_ inside of you. I _want_ you to enjoy yourself." The index and middle finger of his hand slid between her lower lips, then pushed into her vagina. "Don't rush me, Candy. You will regret it."

Candy grabbed fistfuls of the sheets. She'd played plenty with her own fingers in her explorations of her body but having someone else so much as touch her there was alien. With the whimpering sounds that came out through her teeth, the nightmares in Carrion's collar swam to the surface of the fluid, wondering if they should slither out and feed on the girl's fear. Although they received no permission to do so, they hovered at the surface of the liquid that magically failed to spill.

Carrion spread his fingers inside of her. Oh, she was tight. While he fully meant to leave psychological scars to last her a lifetime, he didn't prefer to injure her by being too hasty in pleasure-seeking. Physical injuries were temporary and would fade much faster than the self-loathing he'd be able to inflict if he could make her enjoy herself even a tiny bit. "This will take a while," he informed her, curling his digits to rub the pads of his fingers against her inner walls, making her buck her hips forward against the mattress. "You are _dreadfully_ tight. No toys to play with at home?"

"Don't be disgusting," she said. Her voice shuddered.

"There is _nothing_ disgusting about a lady using appropriate tools to meet her needs. But the fact that you weren't using any...it adds credence to what I told you before: you're not a lady yet. Using your own fingers when you're bored at night doesn't cut it, does it? I bet you can barely reach inside of yourself." He smiled slyly. "I bet the clitoris is even _more_ of a challenge. Could you even manage an orgasm on your own?"

She was mortified even as she panted. "How do you know--?"

"Lucky guess," he purred. There was no laugh, but his tone was slightly more mirthful than miserable. The high-pitched growl of rage she unleashed into the pillow was satisfying. "Don't be ashamed, you wouldn't be the only one with that trouble at your age." Briefly he removed his fingers from her to playfully pinch her clit between thumb and forefinger. "Young people with anatomy like yours often seem to struggle..."

Candy fumed, pressing her knees hard into the bed. She didn't want this to feel good, but on a purely physical level, it _did_. Christopher's long fingers inside of her and rubbing at her clit were _devastating_ her. He had made her sweaty, panting, releasing so much fluid that both of his hands were nearly soaked. He made her whole body shake as she tried to ignore that feeling of pressure in her abdomen, tried to push it back... instead she let out a distressed cry. "Ahh!"

Carrion felt every little movement that her adolescent body made underneath him while he played her like an instrument. He knew how close she was to her orgasm by the way she tensed up and trembled, the way she held her breath. " _You're_ never _going to forget this._ " He showed her no mercy and pushed her into it. She came. He didn't stop pushing her.

The girl moaned like an animal and jerked her hips so forcefully that he had a difficult time keeping them in place and keeping his fingers moving to draw the sensation out. Layers of shivers ran from her crown down her spine. Carrion dripped, nearly _drizzled_ pre-cum onto the backs of her thighs and ass.

Candy's first and most secret thought when the feeling of warmth and pleasure consumed her, spreading from her core to her toes and head was: _This is the best thing my body has ever felt._

The shame hit her next, coming in waves. Why did her first orgasm have to happen this way? Why did it have to make her feel so physically perfect when intellectually she felt that the only thing she should want was to escape? Why did she like the way that he smelled _so much_?

He withdrew both hands from their duties to let Candy breathe. When she stayed face down, he dipped his fingers quickly into his collar to allow his nightmares to collect as much fear as possible from the residue. Coiling around his fingers, they relished it.

Carrion purred from above her, "Don't worry, little girl, you are in luck. There's more where that came from."


	3. Chapter 3

_"I have looked and looked for someone who would understand me. Just a little. That's all. Just understand, a little. The night is very dark sometimes. And in Gorgossium, of course, it's endless."  
_  
-Christopher Carrion, Days of Magic, Nights of War Chapter 42: The High Maze  
  


Candy never had to see his erection, but she felt it move against her flesh again, throbbing and twitching as madly as the nightmares in his collar. It made her freeze like she'd been confronted with a cobra ready to strike.

"Hm," Carrion mused. Candy's body was easier to move now that he had forced her to cum. It seemed to have slackened her muscles, or he had just managed to tire her out. He took a moment to position himself so that his cock rested atop and between her buttocks, drooling eagerly. "You're small. You're _tight_. I assume you can feel now that it's not going to be easy for me to fit inside."

"Then don't do it!" She scolded him. She tried to close her thighs, but he used his knees to keep them parted. Candy felt the textures of all of his clothes--the silks of the robe, the furs from the edges, and the finely woven plant fibers that made up the shirt and pants underneath. The cape had created a pocket of heat that the cold of the Dead Man's House couldn't permeate. If she reached out to her sides, she might just be able to use her fingertips to escape the wingspan of Carrion's engulfing cloak. The warmth underneath had finally thawed her completely.

"Nice try," he said dryly, then switched to a patronizing, sickly-sweet voice. He needed to draw this out to cement it in her memory and to satisfy his own sadistic urges. He trailed a few fingers down her spine. "Aren't you ready, though? _Excited_ , even? Did you never _dream_ of becoming a lady?"

She didn't have an answer. With her total lack of experience, her otherwise detailed fantasies tended to fizzle out when she tried to imagine losing her virginity. She just didn't know enough to imagine it properly. Chickentown sex ed was nonexistent and her mother seemed to put off having the talk with Candy every year because Candy never dated anyone at school. Candy had avoided asking the questions, too, because the idea of having to have that conversation with her mom made her want to scream. Her fantasies had struggled to move past the stage where she was holding a partner in an intimate hug.

The quiet stretched and slowed time. The Lord of Midnight swore he could smell Candy's hair through his nightmare juice.

He was a wretched creature, but it wasn't typical for his sexuality to mingle this closely with his cruelty. He normally thought they were different sides of him. While he waited for an answer from her, it finally occurred to him that while he had tortured all manner of people in many creative and devious ways, he had never done _this_. There were better, more inventive, more _interesting_ forms of torture than rape. Rape-as-torture was simultaneously cliché and gauche. It was _beneath_ him; his other methods were far superior. The twisted and miserable bodies of his victims when he was through with them pleased him the way that fine art did: in his mind. As for sex, fucking was an _animal_ pleasure, something to stimulate the body but not the mind. While he usually left a few claw marks or bruises on his partners, they were entirely incidental--just what happened when beasts rutted in the dark.  
  
So why this now with Candy? Why was this obsession different? Carrion did not want to see the answer, but he knew it and felt it like a hot poker jabbing at his ashen heart. Love, or at least its one-sided sibling that required no reciprocation: it was _infatuation_. An infuriatingly painful lesson that he had never truly learned.

He could no longer self-interrogate or wait for Candy to answer him. Carrion took her silence as an opportunity, and with a hand on one of her hips and one on his cock, he lined himself up with her vagina and forced his way in with all of his might.

Candy screamed hoarsely at the violent penetration and instantly tried to pull herself towards the head of the bed, trying to get him out of her. Carrion wrapped both arms around her torso and pulled her back under him, then switched his grip to her hips. The man's body weight pushed the girl down into the sheets. It was easy to assume that he would be light from his gaunt face, but his weight was at _least_ proportionate to his considerable height. She could feel his chest moving as he breathed, the fabric of his tunic rubbing at her back.

"That hurts!" she shouted. It was a different kind of pain than she had experienced before, a straining, a stretching. It wasn't the sharp pain of a needle or a knife or the clap of a hand on her cheek. It wasn't even like the dizzying feeling of being choked. Every time Carrion throbbed inside of her, it brought new discomfort. He felt enormous, but what did she know? She'd never been with a man before.

" _Breathe_ ," he coached her in that low, dreary, hypnotic tone. "Deep breaths, Candy. The more you fight me and stay tense the more this hurts."

She was about to swear at him when they both heard a creaking sound and froze at the same moment. Inside of her, Candy felt the speed of Carrion's heart increase, and then felt lips against her ear. Through some casual magic, his collar had ceased to interfere with their contact, and when he leaned in close enough, Candy's head passed through the glass and fluids. She didn't become wet from the liquid, and thankfully the nightmares didn't rub up against her flesh. But Carrion's scarred lips did, dry as paper.

"That's Letheo walking outside the room," he breathed into her ear. Beyond quiet, his breath smelled of attics and libraries at midnight. "He must have heard you shouting. He'll hear you through the wall now if you're too loud... you know how it is with old houses."

"Tell him to go away!" She hissed back. Saying those words made a new wave of tears form in her eyes and slide out over her cheeks. She barely knew Carrion's lackey, but the idea of _anyone_ knowing any part of this made her feel like her intestines were braiding themselves.

"I don't care if he listens in on us," Carrion said. The light from his nightmares made his pearly, irregular teeth glitter for just a moment. " _You_ care. You tell him."

Candy's breathing was fast. She sniffed. She swallowed. Her hand twitched where it was buried under the pillow, and she gathered enough of her voice to shout at the wall: "Go away, Letheo!" The words came out high and tense, without any of the confidence that she usually managed.

She wanted to say: _Save me, Letheo._ But there was nothing Letheo could have done. Carrion would only have tortured him.

Together, Candy and Christopher listened. Silently, Carrion used one hand to stroke the girl's silky black hair, making her shake with anger and disgust. She tried to reach back to grab his hand and pull it away from her hair, but he just took advantage of that and held her wrist instead. Only when she tried to yank her hand away did his grip tighten so hard that Candy realized he had enough strength that he could have crushed her little wristbones to dust if he was inclined to do so. She grit her teeth and stopped squirming. The quiet in the air was sticky, and then they heard the footsteps move away from the wall and up a set of creaky stairs.

The girl made a choked sound, trying to suppress a sob.

"He likes you," Carrion said, still speaking softly but no longer whispering. "Everyone does. I certainly do."

To punctuate the words and celebrate their alone-ness again, he sat up in a kneeling position with his elbows still on the bed and Candy's legs at his sides. Letheo had been distraction enough for some of him to slide out of her slit when she wiggled. Carrion rectified this with a slow thrust that made the girl groan.

"If you liked me you wouldn't hurt me!" she said. It was common sense, but still something that eluded many girls who were too young to know better.

"I've been gentle in the past," he said dismissively. He straightened his back, pulling Candy's rear end up with him until her knees supported her. "And I've _been_ patient. I was--you'll want to get on your elbows soon, I think, it will hurt less--I was in love _once_." The way he said 'once' made it clear that he meant 'once and _only_ once.'

She moved with him minimally, reluctantly getting up onto her elbows and hands to brace against the bed and to try to avoid pain. His instruction on how to arrange herself did help, but she would have have admitted it. Taking deep breaths seemed to help just as he had recommended, but it did nothing for the ache in her chest. He moved languidly in and out of her, but at the zenith of every thrust he pushed deeper, deeper.

"Gentleness and patience mean nothing and will get you nowhere. Real love _hurts_ , Candy," he said. The words made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, not because they sounded ominous but because they sounded _honest_. He _meant_ it, no matter how delusional he sounded. Candy could sense an ache in the man's heart, a festering wound that refused to heal. "Worse than anything _I_ could do to you. You're lucky that it's never cursed you. You're lucky to be here, with me. You're _lucky_ that I'm going to save you from it all."

He rocked his hips back and thrust into her again, slowly. It didn't hurt as badly, but she hated it. "I don't want this!" she insisted, arching her back to try to get her hips in just the right position to make it hurt the least.

"We _both_ need this," he said coldly. One of his hands stayed on her hip, the other grabbed a fistful of her dark hair, pulling her head back while he leaned over her. "I meant it when I told you that you were my favorite, Candy. You're quick, you're determined, and you're more clever than most adults who have half the experience you do. You have more raw potential than _anyone_ I have ever met."

Again, he slid out of her and pushed into her quaking body, grinding into her. She could feel him rubbing against that secret spot deep inside of her that her fingers had never been able to reach, that spot that made her go weak with the pleasure. Candy's eyes were wide with tears that drained continuously in the black room while he spoke. What could she possibly say to him?

Another, quicker thrust while Candy trembled. This time it was hard enough for her to feel his balls slap against her flesh.

Carrion's voice grew huskier, a bit more breathy. "Those traits are wonderful things, Candy. But no matter where you go in life, you must know that people will _always_ try to possess you for your power. They will be greedy and envious watching you flourish. They will use love as a weapon to do it, to control you. Because they won't value you the way you _deserve_." By the end he clenched his teeth and growled the words.

He let go of her hair and her head lolled forward. Once more he found her clit with his fingers and probed it without hesitation, diving back into rubbing in aggressive little circles through the fluids. The other grabbed her chest. He lifted her and pulled her back until she was sitting in his lap while he thrust up into her. She resisted, but his arm across her chest held tight, his palm over one of her breasts. He gave it a light squeeze.

"I won't let them do that to you," he snarled. And for the first time since he had taken her virginity, he felt Candy react with pleasure rather than pain. A little spasm inside of her that squeezed his cock and made him groan. Candy moaned with him, and he rewarded her by stroking her clit yet faster, bouncing her up and down in his lap and letting gravity do the work of pulling her back down his cock each time.

"Stop, _stop_ ," she panted. She was breathless, holding onto his arms with weak hands. Her nails raked at his sleeves, pulling them back. She couldn't see the innumerable scars on his skin and he was glad for it.

"And that's why," he spoke over her protests, hugging her so tight that breathing was almost impossible for the girl, his hand shifting from her small breast to her neck. Though his nails were shortened he still managed to dig them into her skin. Jaw still tightened, he went on, "I have to do this. I _scar_ you."

He saw the irony but told himself that he was _right_ to do this. Unlike the woman who had scarred _him_ for merely saying the word 'love,' Christopher felt he understood the nature of love and how to keep it at bay... mostly. After all, Boa had hurt him worse than his grandmother ever could have. His grandmother's great mistake was that her punishment had never prevented him from wanting love, it had never taught him _why_ it was bad. He felt _something_ for Candy now, and whatever it was motivated him to spare her that curse just as much as it motivated him to embed himself in her nightmares.

"You won't forget this. You can't. I will haunt you for life, for your own good... and because you are my _favorite little girl_. Now cum, Candy. Cum for me and show me your body understands all that love _really_ is. Show me you're a _lady_ now."

For a few seconds, she struggled, still trying to pull herself off of his erection, but he pulled her all the way down his shaft until her wet lips kissed to the base of his cock. Finally, her pussy clamped down on him so tightly that it hurt him too. He didn't care, he _needed_ to do this to her.

Candy's orgasm was _debilitatingly_ powerful. With all the might she never knew she had, her inner walls spasmed around the man inside of her. Carrion came with her moments later, able to finish only when he knew she was done and that he had sufficiently tormented her. While the girl let out a keening wail, he growled in satisfaction as his manhood pumped his seed into her.

He held her close, still sheathed in her. The heat from inside of him no longer overwhelmed them both and he felt Candy's natural heat, the sweat on her body, her exhaustion palpable through her skin. How fragile, vulnerable she was! How he wanted to squeeze her until she shattered into a million pieces that he could keep safely in a jar with him forever.

Both of them were at a loss for words, but Candy moved first. Carrion's grip eased and she pulled herself off of him slowly, inch by inch while her thighs shuddered. Walking would hurt for a while, and she wondered if she had bled. It certainly hurt enough. Carrion watched her curl up like a fetus on her side while he got his pants back into place. Later, when he was alone, he would remove all of his clothes and examine the underwear and pants in the light, smelling them both to relive her scent and to see if he could find traces of the girl's virgin blood on them.

Carrion's nightmares danced slowly, wobbling sometimes as if they were drunk. Orgasms could certainly warp them from their natural selves for short periods of time. Pleasure and nightmares had never been mutually exclusive, and he counted on that to haunt the girl.

"Did you really mean it?" she asked him. She faced away from him where she lay.

He wasn't sure which part she meant, so he didn't answer.

Candy clarified, "When you said I was your favorite little girl. When you said I was clever and all that."

"Every word," he said solemnly, sullenly.

"On the roof, you said people would be better off with me dead. You said you'd kill me."

He barely kept himself from arguing with her about the wording, but she wasn't wrong. He laughed very softly, "If I wanted you dead, I would have let you fall off the roof. Letting you dangle was enough for me."

She took a few breaths and sniffed, adjusting the position of her arms where they were crossed over her chest. So she had been right, he didn't want her dead. "All of this would be easier if you just hated me."

"It would, lady," he agreed. For the first time, there was some tenderness in his voice. If he could have hated her, he could have killed her as his grandmother wanted. He could have never thought about her again. But thoughts of Candy were pervasive, hard to ignore, hard to root out. He was fond of her. He was more than fond of her.

That wasn't enough for Candy. She groaned. "Don't call me that. I don't want to be a lady."

Carrion slowly lay on his side behind her and cast his cloak over them both as a blanket once more. The pillow under his head reached his face by passing through his collar. Again, the liquid kept in its container and didn't dampen anything else, but his nightmares began to settle onto the pillow or onto his face, preparing to rest with their master. "You are a lady now. And you know the truth about love. Or the truth as it is for people like us. Love is a _weapon_. A method for the weak to parasitize those who have true power. They will take everything from you if they can. Do not let them."

Candy processed slowly. "That happened to my mom." She felt like she'd swallowed ice, realizing that what Carrion preached did have some shard of truth. Her father was a parasite dragging her mother into oblivion.

This interested Carrion but he only told her, "It happened to me when I was still a young man. Princess Boa, whom I loved with all my heart, took a great deal from me. More than I can say with words. I would never wish that on you."

Staring at the back of Candy's head lit by his nightmares, he was compelled to reach forward under the cloak to touch her body again, to trail his fingers down her side. She tensed up while his hand slid around to press his palm between her breasts and pull her to him until her bare back pressed to his chest and he could wrap her in his robes and cloak like a spider intent on wrapping up not only its prey but itself as well. His fingertips listened to her heart rate. Her heart pounded steadily.

Now that his body gradually began to cool down, Candy was the warm one. His hand fanned out so that his fingertips reached both of her clavicles, and she once again had to grapple with the fact that this was a kind of touch--being held against someone else's body while lying down, being held gently--that her body enjoyed no matter how broken her heart was.

"Why are you interested in _me_ though? You got your key. I'm still not giving you my dreams." She wiped her eyes.

There was no easy answer. When he told her, he sounded almost dreamy. "There's no one else like you in all of the Abarat."

People had been telling Candy this since she had arrived. Sometimes it had been confusing but kind of nice to be special, to have the attention of adults who seemed to like her. Carrion now made her loathe it. The next time someone praised her, she was certain she would hear Carrion whispering in her ear. The memory of him would haunt her as he promised. She hadn't thought much about intimacy before, and now the thought of it was nauseating. He was in her mind, in her body. She had no doubt that he would be in her nightmares as well.

"You should sleep," he told her. Christopher brushed her hair with his fingertips. He knew he could never take her back to his grandmother. "Your friends will be on their way and they will get here sooner rather than later. It would be best if you were as ready as possible to flee with them when they arrive." It was an order. God help her, she obeyed.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your favorite part(s) if you'd be so kind. It helps me write more appealing things for the future.
> 
> Anonymous comments are enabled. I know many users are afraid to comment on dark fics like this because of backlash for it from people who don't understand the catharsis that stories like this can provide, so I am more than happy to hear from you anonymously if you prefer.


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